


i was born hungry; what do i need?

by cipherwriter



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Eating Disorders, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, and that's three halves babey, this is half meta half fic and half projection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-24
Updated: 2020-04-24
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:41:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23825476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cipherwriter/pseuds/cipherwriter
Summary: jon has been hungry his entire life, he thinks. he's used to it. except, people keep getting involved.except, there's a new kind of hunger that he's never felt before.
Relationships: Georgie Barker/Jonathan Sims, Jonathan Sims & Alice "Daisy" Tonner, Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims
Comments: 49
Kudos: 422





	i was born hungry; what do i need?

**Author's Note:**

> the earliest idea of this fic was "what happens when you have a restrictive eating disorder but then it kinda sorta becomes justified." a day and 8,000 words later and here we are

Jon does not like Martin. He is rambling and imprecise and a poor researcher. He may be nice and “likable” in a way that Jon is not, but niceness doesn’t help run an archive, does it. Jon really has no use for it at work, which means he, personally, has no use for it at all. Being personable takes time out of his day, time that is far more useful spent putting this mess of an institution into some sort of sane order. 

This is, of course, the only reason why Martin’s tea making habits infuriate him. To make a mug of tea for everyone every day must certainly take time out of his work, though Jon supposes that yes, he does have the right to take breaks. He’s not running some sort of sweatshop here. But, to then interrupt Jon’s work in order to knock on his door, all nervous rambling of “ah, today I’ve tried a chai with milk and one sugar” or “this one, I think you’ll like it, because, well, you are recording all day and I can only imagine how that must be on your throat, so I’ve brought a chamomile with honey, because that’s supposed to, y’know, help with… your throat, like I was talking about, so…” is entirely unnecessary and unwelcome. 

Still, while Jon sees no use in niceness, he also sees no point in outright rudeness, so he’ll give him a clipped “very well” and Martin will stand awkwardly for a moment, until Jon sighs in irritation and- well. He’ll swallow and look down at the tea with its milk or sugar or honey and he’ll- he’ll… take a sip. He’ll take a sip. No problem. That’s what people do with tea, why shouldn’t he, and Martin will look on to get his response. Jon will say “I’ve tried your tea, now you can go” and he’ll try to keep the disgust off his face and out of his voice at the cloying, heavy sweetness. Evidently, it must not work, as Martin tries something new the next day every time. 

And then there is tea. On his desk. With milk and sugar and honey and really, how much of that do they have? Who replaces these things in the breakroom? Jon knows he certainly doesn’t, and he is kind of the boss around here, so he’s not sure who would. Elias might, but Jon has the sense that Martin may be bringing his various teas and tea paraphernalia from home, using his own money, his own goods on Jon. 

Jon gets back to reading, only now there is tea on his desk. He reads as the tea goes cold. He records a statement and then he looks at the mug. It is dark green. It is always dark green. Did Martin set aside a mug specifically for him or are all the office mugs the same? The recording is still running. Jon has started pondering his tea out loud.

He clicks off the recording.

Jon does not want to waste the tea. He is not a wasteful man. Growing up, he had- well, he had had enough, but his grandmother had not expected to take care of another growing child, and you didn’t let perfectly good food go to waste when there wasn’t always the guarantee of it. 

So, Jon will take another sip of the tea. And another. And another. He will feel it run down his throat and swish in his stomach, filling up the empty spaces and filling nothing at all. The shaking of his hands has nothing to do with it, his hands always shake, and the pounding of his heart doesn’t either because to have a response like that to drinking a mug of tea would be absurd.

He starts to sort his work days into “before tea” and “after tea” and gets very irritated with himself that he does. It is not an event, it is a mug of tea. It makes no difference. And yet, everyday, he hears the knock on his door and distantly hears Martin’s explanation that today is a black tea because he “seems pretty tired, and black tea has the most caffeine of any tea, you know, well, now that I say it you probably do know, you are really a generally knowledgeable person, certainly more than I am” and he knows that at least the next hour of his life is going to be about this tea. 

One day, swallowing down his tea as though someone had dropped a slug in it, Jon decides that enough is enough. There’s only so much he can take, and he can risk hurting Martin’s delicate feelings in exchange for finally being able to focus for an entire day without the distraction of his damned tea. The next day, he will be telling Martin to stop bringing him tea, thank you very much.

He’ll have to get to Martin before he makes the tea, of course, to avoid being wasteful. Martin generally brings him tea at around 3:30, so he figures if he goes to the breakroom at 3:20, he’ll be able to beat him to it. No tea today, or ever again. 

Unfortunately, it would seem as though everyone decides to take a break when Martin makes tea, so Jon enters into the breakroom to find his entire staff hanging out. 

Jon takes a step back, but he’s too late. The assistants’ heads whip up to see him standing in the doorway.

“Jon! What a surprise! I didn’t think you knew where the breakroom is!” Tim says, a grin stretching across his face.

“Yes, well-” Jon begins.

“Have you decided to take your first lunch break in your entire career?” Sasha asks, her smirk more subdued than Tim’s obvious glee at making fun of him.

“No, I-” 

“Sasha, I don’t think Jon can even comprehend those two words, much less together as one idea.”

Jon’s face is surely red by now, and he is about to simply walk away and try this again on some other day with a better plan, when Martin says, “Have you had lunch yet today, Jon?”

And now he is put on the spot. It’s not exactly a question he can just walk away from, surely Martin will just ask it again when he comes with his accursed tea later because the man has no sense of when to leave things be, and Tim and Sasha are now looking on as well, with expressions that are curious and far closer to concern than Jon had expected or wanted. 

It’s an interesting question, too. Lots of implications in it. “Have you had lunch yet today, Jon?” If you stress different words, the meaning changes. For Jon, the particularly interesting versions are “Have you had _lunch_ yet today, Jon?” due to its emphasis on the particular meal, lunch, and not a broader question of “Have you eaten yet today, Jon?” There is also consideration to be had of the question “Have you had lunch _yet_ today, Jon?” which of course implies that at some point, Jon will or should have lunch, like it is an inevitability, and the only question to be considered is when it happens. And there is the particularly interesting “Have you had lunch yet _today_ , Jon?” as though “today” is particularly unique, when really, the question could be asked any day and be met with the same answer.

So Jon does not emphasize any of the words when he says, “No, Martin, I have not had lunch yet today.”

“Are you hungry? It’s rather late to have not eaten and, well, you don’t seem to have anything with you, or, um, in the fridge. There’s cans of soup in the pantry that you could microwave, if you want?” 

“There’s cereal there, too, and fruit in the fridge if you wanted something lighter,” Sasha offers and Jon wishes that she and Tim would go back to making fun of him instead of looking at him like he’s some child that needs to be looked after, told where the food is and what he can and cannot eat.

“I appreciate the information, but I’m quite alright, thank you,” Jon manages without sounding absolutely furious (he hopes), and then he turns on his heel and walks away. 

Martin brings his tea that day with cookies, and Jon wills his face to not turn red again as he takes a sip of his licorice tea and sends Martin off. There are exactly two lemon cookies, roughly 5 centimeters in diameter. They feel like sandpaper on his throat.

***

Jon had never really considered things like hunger or tiredness. As a child, he would go for days on end without sleeping on occasion, either sneaking out of his grandmother’s house at midnight and returning (or being returned) in the early morning, or reading before bed until suddenly it was 7 PM the next day. His grandmother didn’t interrupt him for meals most of the time, because it was hard enough to get him settled as it was, and she would not ruin it. So he would wander downstairs and eat the leftovers in the fridge and start the process over again. Days were rare when he ate three full meals, and this was a quiet relief to his grandmother, who didn’t know what she would do if he was one of those little boys that eats everything in sight. He was hungry for books, and those could be read and sold and didn’t break the bank.

The thing is, it wasn’t as though he didn’t feel hunger, he just didn’t really care about it. He enjoyed some foods, theoretically, but the things he liked were special occasion foods. Sweets were for holidays and birthdays only. They were a treat, and as such, something you earned. Otherwise, he figured he’d survive some hunger now and then. It’s not like he was starving.

By his teen years, Jon had gotten quite used to ignoring the clawing of hunger in him, and he was not planning on putting a sudden extra strain on his grandmother to feed him more through puberty and growth spurts, so he was awkward and skinny in a way that was too short to be described as lanky, unpopular for his appearance and his sharp nature. It was fine. He had a greater affinity for books than friends, and he spent lunch periods in the library.

The bullying was unpleasant, he won’t deny. He had no name, he was “the nerd.” He was skinny because he ate books for lunch. He was twitchy and weird and notoriously afraid of spiders (a fact that everyone found out when he’d had a panic attack in class when one had crawled onto his desk) like a little fly. He asked too many questions, weird questions, the kinds that the teachers thought were too advanced for their grade or they didn’t even know the answer. He was probably some alien that had landed on Earth, like an uncool Superman, and that’s why he asked so many questions, so he could learn more about humanity and report back to his overlords. That’s why he didn’t have any parents.

Needless to say, Jon far preferred his university years to his childhood.

Even so, with his college job and enough money to get himself food and friends he could eat with, he just… didn’t, much. It felt wrong, to take breaks from his reading and writing and what have you just to eat. Hunger had never bothered him before, and at this point it felt wrong to not be hungry. Besides, it was a waste of money and food to eat when he felt no particular need to. When his hands started to shake too much or he got too lightheaded, he would make a mental note to get food. Once he finished what he was working on.

Georgie believed it was a problem. She’d give him food and he’d put it back in the fridge half the time, until she confronted him about his supposed “eating disorder.” He didn’t have an eating disorder. He ate unusually, he could concede that much, but it wasn’t like he was trying to get skinny in order to impress someone or something like that. He just didn’t care about eating.

Except. Well.

That’s not to say he didn’t care about his weight at all. The way his bones jutted out from under his skin, his defined ribcage. It just wasn’t in that way where he was trying to be attractive or some nonsense. He just, well, he just liked being skinny. He liked being just a bit hungry all the time, and he (was scared of) didn’t like being satiated.

Plus, he thought food was. Bad. He would usually just tell people he was picky, had a small appetite, whatever. He would usually tell himself that, too. But really, fundamentally, he just thought eating was wrong. People eat. Regular, human, people. And he was awkward and rude and more focused on information that no one else in the world cared about than he was with trying to be a person. And normal people didn’t even have to try to be people. He liked his relationship with Georgie, but he knew it wasn’t like other people’s because of him. Because he didn’t care about the things that other people did. Because he wasn’t quite a person enough.

So being skinny just proved, to him, that he was good. He was doing the right thing as not-a-person. He was working and learning and leaving the food for people who needed it and sending money and gifts to his grandmother to thank her for all she had done for him. He ate what his friends made for him so as not to waste it (even though they’d already wasted it by giving it to him) and he did enough to stay alive, essentially. He saw no reason to do any more.

When he and Georgie broke up, he stopped eating for five days, chainsmoking for meals. He threw himself into researching eating disorders, because researching was something he was good at and he might as well inform himself to understand why Georgie had said what she’d said. He concluded that no, he didn’t have an eating disorder, thank you very much. But he couldn’t help but find the pictures fascinating.

***

Nikola feeds him. Everything is in liquid form. He almost prefers the foul tasting protein shakes to the times she’d given him liquified meats.

“Can’t have you dying on us, can we now, Archivist? Besides, your skin will be much nicer and healthier once you’ve gotten some food into you, and I can see you’ve been neglecting that for a long time,” she crows with that same old grin on her face.

It’s the fullest Jon has felt in a while. He doesn’t want to talk about it.

***

Jon is lightheaded and dizzy and sick. He feels so sick. It’s the kind of sick that came after he went particularly long without eating, so he (reluctantly) gets himself food. It makes him feel no different.

It’s odd. Lately, despite not eating any more than usual, he had been feeling less hungry. He had started eating even less because obviously he didn’t need it if he wasn’t hungry, and yet, still, he was mostly satiated.

But, even that wasn’t completely right. There had still been the physical pangs of hunger, but something deeper than that had felt completely fine. 

But now, he’s ill. He’s said it on the tapes, which are becoming more and more his own journal, which he should be avoiding. He is still trying to find information. These may be listened to one day, and even if not, it’s about the principle of it. These should record proper information. 

But it’s hard, when he feels so awful.

And then, Elias sends a statement and he feels better. He gets lost in the reading, as always, and he feels nothing but the feelings of the statement. And then he’s done and it’s like he’s gotten a night of rest, like he’s eaten a meal after days and days of neglecting it. 

It’s odd. He’d always replaced meals with statements before (and before becoming Head Archivist he’d replaced it with books and research and what not), he just never noticed how literal that had become. It’s concerningly inhuman. He’d always shunned his human needs before, but to suddenly have them changed is not as comforting as he’d always thought it would be.

***  
He knows, automatically, what bone to give to Jared Hopworth. He’s always liked the outline of his ribs, true, but getting rid of a couple of them will make his waist even smaller. Not that he cares, really. It’s just worth mentioning.

Besides, it’s not as though he needs them. They’re just floaters, the least important bones he could get rid of. So it’s not even a question when he’s offered the choice to give up another to get Jared’s statement. And the asymmetricality would have driven him crazy anyway.

Sometimes, Jon looks at his rib and feels the spot where it was. The empty space beneath his fingers feels like relief.

It’s no wonder the rib didn’t really help him escape the Buried.

***

“You should probably eat more.”

“I- what?” Jon looks up from the statement he’s recording. It’s on the laptop. Frankly, he’s not entirely sure why he bothers to record these anymore, outside of his own need to have everything organized. And someone had sent these in, thinking they were real, and although he knows they weren’t caused by one of the Entities, that doesn’t mean it wasn’t something else. They still deserve due consideration, he supposes.

Daisy is sitting in the corner. He hadn’t noticed her come in, and what a turn of events from the man who was paranoid enough to accuse Martin of trying to murder him to simply not notice when someone who actually had enters his office. 

They’ve all changed.

“I’m here a lot and you don’t eat anything, almost ever. Even when you’re here a lot later than you should be,” Daisy continues. 

“I guess it just slips my mind,” Jon says with that typical shortness he feels whenever anyone brings up his eating habits. “Obviously not a big deal if I don’t notice it.”

“Is this another martyr thing?” 

Jon sputters at that. “No, that’s- it’s not- I have no idea what you mean by that.”

“You’re moping again. Wallowing. You work instead of eating cause you feel bad or something,” Daisy says in that irritating no nonsense big sister way she has.

Well it doesn’t matter, anyway. She’s only half right. Maybe Jon has eaten less and less as the years have gone on at the Institute (he remembers actually eating lunch when he was in Research), but he has always been like this. He works through meals because work is better and more important than eating and always has been, so unless he’s just been guilty his entire life (don’t look into that) then this is not a guilty thing.

“I’ve always been like this, Daisy. Nothing new,” Jon says and it feels mostly like the truth, so he’ll take it.

“Then maybe you ought to develop new habits,” Daisy says, unflinching. The two of them make eye contact for a few moments more.

“I need to finish this statement,” Jon says eventually, and Daisy doesn’t contradict him even though they both know he doesn’t, really.

When Jon looks up again a while later, there is a simple peanut butter sandwich and a glass of milk on his desk, like he’s an eight year old. Daisy looks at him. He glares at her. She raises an eyebrow at him. 

He picks up the sandwich and takes a bite.

***

Jon is hungry. Jon is so incredibly hungry and he thought he could handle it but he can’t and God it feels good when he stops being hungry the fear on those people’s faces after he feeds is disgustingly good he loves it.

But. It’s wrong. It is so wrong. He would purge it if he could but this satisfaction is not like other satisfactions it is not reversible but he keeps doing it because it feels good and if he doesn’t he feels so empty and dizzy and terrible and-

He has a choice. He has a choice. He is not being controlled. He has always been able to overcome his human instincts. He’ll just have to learn to overcome his monster instincts too. He can do this. He will do this, as much as he hates it and just wants to feed. He will get through it.

He misses when he wished he wasn’t human.

***

Martin gives Jon tea again, after the Lonely, after the everything. It is as cloyingly sweet as Jon remembers. But he likes it. 

He thinks, really, that he always liked it. He just refused to allow that. And it still is… complicated.

Jon does not deserve tea, still. But, it makes Martin happy when he drinks it, which means that it is not actually going to waste. Martin likes to take care of people, Jon has figured out, which includes him, as absurd as that is. Actually, Martin especially likes caring for Jon, which is even more baffling. Still, if it makes Martin happy, then it makes Jon happy. Or, at least, it makes Jon brave enough to not drink his tea like it’s swamp water.

But Jon grows hungry. He has old statements that he grabbed from the Archives, but they’re not enough anymore. They’re like only drinking tea for a whole day.

Luckily, Jon is very used to only drinking tea for his whole day, physically, and he is sure that he can get used to that on this level (which he’s not sure to call mentally, spiritually, or eldritchally) as well. He has lived and thrived in deprivation his whole life, and now there’s finally a real good reason to do it.

He still needs to eat. He thinks that this is rather unfair, all things considered. If he was inhuman and undeserving of food before, he certainly is so now, but it seems his body never got that memo. Probably, if he were receiving a more consistent stream of fresh new Statements, he would have less need to eat. But that would also mean traumatizing innocent people, condemning them to nightmares forever. And he is not going to do that, sorry, the Beholding is just going to have to fuck off.

He is able to convince Martin, for a while, that he does not have to eat as much as the average person anymore. Jon is fairly certain that Martin was not aware of his habit of only eating once or twice (or never) a day, before. He hopefully never knew enough to think it was a problem, which is good, because it’s not.

Jon keeps telling himself this until the day he faints.

It is not the first time he’s fainted, obviously. He’s fainted for a few different reasons over the course of his life, and hunger has been one of them. He usually doesn’t get to this point intentionally, he just forgets to eat for too long a time. This time, it seems he had not accounted for the combination of Eye hunger and normal hunger, and so was caught off guard.

The problem with his fainting this time around is that he had never fainted from hunger around someone who would be concerned before. 

Jon and Martin are trying to clean at the safehouse when it happens. They have been here for a short while now, enough that most of the dust and all of the spiders and cobwebs are gone, but the more built in grime in the bathroom still needs to be taken care of, which is precisely what they’re doing. 

It’s a combination of things that makes it happen then. Jon is on the ground, scrubbing vigorously by the base of the toilet while Martin cleans the higher areas by the showerhead. And Jon needs to stop for a moment, just to stretch and catch his breath, he’s been working very hard at this and he’s breathing in all the cleaning fumes, so he stands up. And then, very suddenly, his breathing gets faster and nausea rolls over him and his vision is turning a bit starry and a bit dark, so he sits back down against the wall, immediately. And distantly his name is being said and then repeated but Jon is just trying to blink his vision back to normal but it’s not working and then he’s not really aware of much of anything.

It’s only a moment later that Jon opens his eyes again, still shaky and nauseated. Martin is crouched in front of him and-Jon looks down to check-is holding him up by his shoulders. Jon looks back up and is now present enough to read the expression on Martin’s face as concern and oh, that shouldn’t be there. Jon is fine. He pushes Martin off and stands to prove it.

That is, he tries to do that, but Martin keeps a firm grip on his shoulders. “Jon, you shouldn’t stand up on your own yet, okay? You need to catch your breath first.” Oh, yes, he is still breathing rather fast, isn’t he? 

A thoughtful look comes over Martin’s face, and the arms around Jon’s shoulders move to under his arms and he is being lifted. Which is odd, but Martin’s hands are strong and warm and they pull Jon close and hold him up with strong and warm arms, which are all nothing like Jon’s limbs which are weak and cold and shaky, not just now but always.

“I’m gonna take you out of here, so you can catch your breath, because there’s too many chemicals in here right now,” Martin says, which explains why all of this is happening. 

And then Martin is lowering Jon down onto the couch and he is stepping back, still crouched at face level, and Jon is getting his breath and brainpower back and oh. Oh dear.

“Are you- why did you- what just- is everything okay?” Martin asks, and despite his stammering, the question he settles on comes out strong and concerned and, for lack of better words, suspicious. He looks at Jon with compassion, but there’s something firm in his face too.

“I’m, uh, quite alright now, I think. Just got a bit lightheaded, I suppose,” Jon answers, and he knows, innately, that yes his hunger was probably the primary cause, but he does not want to mention it. “All those chemicals must have gotten to me.”

Martin is not so easily misguided. “Jon, do you really not need to eat as much anymore.” It comes out flat, a question that he already knows the answer to but wants to let Jon answer honestly.

Jon does not want to answer honestly. He doesn’t like lying, and over time has found it more and more difficult as the Eye overtook him (it’s like Michael said, lying is the opposite of knowing), but saying this out loud suddenly makes it a Problem, which it’s not and should not be and doesn’t have to be. So, he continues deflecting like he always does.

“I- I think part of the problem is that I haven’t given the Eye enough. The statements I’ve gotten just don’t cut it anymore, I suppose.” Jon tries for a light chuckle. It is not returned.

Martin takes a breath. Fuck. Jon realizes that he should have just left it at “yes, I misled you and I actually do have the same nutritional needs as before” because Martin has not been convinced, and now he knows that there are two problems that Jon has been hiding.

“Jon, since I met you, you’ve- well, you’ve never exactly been the biggest eater. At first, I thought, oh, maybe he’s just one of those people who doesn’t have the biggest appetite, or something. But, but then I found out you never took lunch breaks and-” Martin takes another breath.

“I know that you hated my tea. Back when. I thought, at first, that I just hadn’t figured out the right way, and then I just, I wanted to… see you more.” Martin blushes, and Jon smiles fondly. As if he didn’t already know that Martin had had a crush on him back then. As if they weren’t together now. “And then, there was the day you came to the breakroom, do you remember? You didn’t have any lunch, or anything, and it made me think… I never saw you bring lunch in, but I hadn’t thought about it, before. After, though, I noticed that you kept not bringing it in, so I kept bringing you tea and cookies or fruit or whatever because you would always eat that. Or at least, it was gone at the end of the day, so I hoped. But I knew you wouldn’t eat stuff on your own.”

Jon remembers what Martin is talking about. Of course he does. He ate the things that Martin gave him for a while, right up until the worms and Gertrude and Jon’s paranoia truly began, at which point he threw out all food that was given to him on risk of poisoning. Eliminating Martin as a suspect had been a relief, right up until he realized how much food he had been wasting due to his distrust and stupidity and had a hell of a panic attack. But, while it lasted, it had started to become… nice. Like Daisy and her sandwiches. He never felt too full, but it was food that he didn’t have to constantly worry about, if he was having too much, too little, if he deserved it or not. It was a constant; he would be given food no matter what, so he had to eat it. 

“I’ve always hoped that maybe you just didn’t bring food to work or something, and that at home you had plenty. You’d always been pretty distant, and kind of stand-offish, plus you have that nasty habit of working constantly, so I thought you might have just skipped over eating at the office. But that’s not it, was it?” Martin says, and Jon knows this is the moment where it will all come apart, where Martin will say what Georgie said and he’ll try to change things and-

“How much did you usually eat, back then?”

Jon won’t lie. He won’t deflect, either. It’s a pretty direct question, very little wiggle room to be had, anyway. “I’d eat… maybe a meal or two a day, most days. Sometimes, all I would have was what you brought, and sometimes I’d have a full breakfast and dinner, but usually it was the tea, and dinner, and something small in the morning.”

He doesn’t say it in a sad or strange way, but that doesn’t stop Martin’s eyes from welling up and God, when is he going to stop hurting Martin, he’d really thought that was over by now.

“What would you consider a full meal?” Martin asks, because he could never leave well enough alone.

“I- I don’t know. I’d have a sandwich, or I’d make fish, or I’d microwave soup for dinner. I wasn’t the greatest cook or anything like that, ate a lot of plain chicken and raw fruits and vegetables. I ate a piece of fruit in the morning most days. It wasn’t…” And he tries to say it wasn’t too bad. He does. But it won’t come out. 

It’s a lie, and he can’t say it.

“No, it wasn’t- it was f-“ Jon tries again, but throat won’t make the sounds his mouth won’t form the shapes “I was o- I wasn’t- There was no-” and he’s breathing fast again but he won’t faint this time he refuses,

Jon claps his hands over his mouth as his eyes tear up. He doesn’t understand. He didn’t want to talk about this because it would make Martin upset, not- he wasn’t supposed to- it wasn’t supposed to cause anything in him.

But suddenly he remembers, and not only that, he Knows. He sees it from inside and out and it was terrible. He wasn’t well, not at all, how did he ever think he was? He was snippy and reactive and short tempered because he was hungry. He deprived himself the moment his routine changed because he didn’t know anything else. He thought about food every time it was brought into his vicinity, every time he didn’t have anything else to concentrate on. He ate as many calories as a child. He was cold and shaky all the time, rail thin and weak. He’d look at his collar bones in the mirror while his stomach growled, he didn’t sleep because he couldn’t anyway from the hunger, he made his friends concerned and sad when they went out together.

He’d wake Georgie in the middle of the night from the iciness of his hands and feet, until she got him to eat more often and he felt so hot because his body finally had the energy to make heat. He’d soften around the edges when he wasn’t hungry, when his grandmother and Georgie and Martin and Daisy fed him, but he refused to put the dots together until now.

His paranoia was worsened by the lack of food. Everything, all of it, all his shortnesses and despairs… they would have been there, still, but maybe at some point he could have managed his emotions, learned to communicate or talk things through before he did reckless things. He could have been better. Everyone could have been better.

And why did he do it? Because he didn’t deserve to eat? Because he’d gotten used to it? Because he’d had a superiority complex and it made him feel better than other people, like he was somehow less human and had fewer needs than everyone around him, that he could ignore his body for the “betterment” of his mind? Well, look where that landed you, idiot; you’re no longer human and you certainly know a whole lot. Are you happy?

Martin’s arms are around Jon and oh God he’s crying into his shoulder, that got out of control very quickly, but it feels as though Martin is crying too, so Jon tries to pat his back comfortingly, until he’s suddenly aware again of how cold his hands are and how this must be even worse for Martin, so he lets them fall back down. He can’t even comfort his boyfriend right anymore, if he ever could.

Martin pulls back to look Jon in the face, his eyes red and his cheeks tear stained. “Jon, I don’t ever want you to be hungry again. Ever. I want you to have enough for as long as you live.”

And then Jon is sobbing again. Because he can’t. Here he is, finally had his epiphany, but as much as he keeps his physical body satisfied he will have to feed the Eye and he can’t because then he’s feeding the Eye. He’s contributing to evil. He’s giving people nightmares. He will always be hungry and he wasted the years where he could have not been.

Martin holds Jon’s face and he presses their foreheads together and whispers how he will make Jon food and he will help teach Jon how to find motivation all on his own and he will get therapy at some point and it will all be good, he won’t have to live with this anymore, but Jon can only cry harder.

“I-” he starts, in hiccuping, choking words, “I have- to be- hungry.” And Martin starts to interrupt but Jon won’t let him, he needs Martin to know. “I have- to be- hungry, or I’ll- I’ll hurt people- because the Statements- hurt people- to take- but I- need them be-bec-becaus-” and he never gets through the word as he breaks down again. It’s fine. Martin already knows that he’s made stupid choices.

Martin pulls Jon in closer again and Jon is surrounded by his warmth, warmth that he knows he’ll never have, and he tries to let it be enough for now as he cries.

***

Martin has been feeding Jon. It was rough, at first. Slow and torturous as Jon got used to eating, physically and mentally. 

They’d fought, a couple times, and Jon felt so guilty for it, but- look he hadn’t asked to be “helped” and he didn’t always want it. He wanted to be hungry. He wanted to think about food and the emptiness inside him instead of all the other terrible stuff in his world that he could be focused on.

“I know you don’t want to eat, but you have to,” Martin will say as they sit at the table together. “Not a whole lot, just something, okay?”

“This is stupid,” Jon will snarl. “I’m perfectly fi-”

And then when Jon physically can’t argue back because it would be a lie, the argument ends. Not much that Jon can say in his favor after that.

Oftentimes, Jon will cry, and Martin will hold him as he forces down whatever is in front of him, usually something pathetically small to have a breakdown over, and it should be embarrassing to cry to someone over it, but it’s Martin. And then Martin rubs circles in his back and tells him how he’s proud, which is nice. Jon could never have imagined someone being proud of him for eating.

And then one time, Jon is furious. There was no particular reason why that day as opposed to any other, he just was. And, he, well-

“I know you’ve missed being a caretaker, Martin, but I am not your sickly mother in need of someone else looking out for me!” 

Jon regrets the words the second they come out of his mouth, and Martin walks right out the front door.

When he comes back later, Jon has made him tea. It’s still hot. 

“I… Knew you’d be coming back soon,” Jon says rather sheepishly. Martin sees that he’s trying, approaching Martin with his own love language.

Martin puts his mug on the table. “What happened earlier? What you said? Can’t happen again. I know you’re struggling, but some things are off limits.”

“I know,” Jon says. “I’m sorry,” Jon says.

Martin knows that he’s telling the truth, even without the Eye’s limit on him.

They talk for a while that night.

***

Jon will never be able to eat as much as other people, probably. Certainly not without actual medical intervention. Some things will never be quite right, but at least now he might be able to eat enough to not feel constant hunger. 

He doesn’t know what to do with all the energy he has, so he just goes on walks with Martin to see the countryside. They appreciate cows together. Martin points at one and says “That’s you” and Jon points at the one next to it and says “That one’s you.” It’s nice.

He is still hungry.

Martin doesn’t make him explain why he had (has) his habits, but he welcomes it. He thinks it might help address specific feelings that Jon has. So, Jon does, in starts and stops, to the best of his ability. He has to figure it out and put it into words before he can tell Martin about it.

He remembers how in his research about… these things, it was often about control. He finds it hard to deny that, now. He used it to feel less human, because he’d always been made to feel less human. It was reclamation, and reclamation is always a type of control.

It was stupid, a perfect storm of circumstances that made his brain latch onto this as the best way to deal with things. And with clear eyes he can look back and see the periods when he ate and was happier and the periods where he didn’t, and why. 

He makes a graph of it, because of course he does. The timeline of his life, with the amount of food he ate as one line and the general emotions he felt as another. They moved up and down together, mostly. The pattern is so obvious.

Bassira sends in more stale statements to hold him over. He survives. He is still hungry.

When he gets a bit lightheaded on walks, Martin immediately gets suspicious. As if Jon could be secretly not eating the meals that they have together. Jon just gives him a tight smile and says, “Statements.” They walk back home.

Jon cries about this too. He cries into Martin’s chest in the middle of the night, trying to feel the warmth and the presence of him and drive out the hunger but it’s always there.

He wants to relapse. (Relapse is a generous word for someone who has not been recovered much at all.) He wants to be hungry in a way he can control, in a way that’s his. He’s tired of his God-given hunger. This was always his, this was always the one thing that he could claim all for himself, and now it’s been taken and twisted.

Some days he can’t get out of bed in the morning. He stares at the blank ceiling and it looks like how he feels. Martin brings him food so he can fill his body up, but there’s nothing to be done for what really ails him.

Jon can see that Martin wants to say something about it, sometimes. Like he wants to offer up some sort of grand solution to all his problems. They both know he can’t. As much as Martin loves Jon and Jon loves Martin, they know they can’t condemn more people to suffer.

Still, he says, “Surely some people already get nightmares about it? So you won’t be doing anything worse to them than what’s already happening.”

“That doesn’t mean they’ll have nightmares their whole lives,” Jon says, nestled into Martin’s chest. “After a Statement it’s a guarantee. Besides, how would we get those people? Post on the forums? ‘If you’ve ever had a supernatural experience that haunts you to this very day, please call our hotline. It won’t make you feel better, but you’ll be doing us a great favor.’”

The two of them chuckle at that a bit, which turns to laughing, which turns to crying, which turns back to soft laughter again.

So Jon is hungry. But, for now, he’s surviving.

***

Martin is out shopping when she comes. He used to be surprised when she showed up places, but now he knows without looking that she’s here.

“Hello, Helen.”

“I like the place you’ve got here, Archivist. Good location, nice sun exposure- this is a house I could sell,” Helen says, and Jon turns with half a smile on his face to see Helen in her purple suit.

“Well, I don’t think anyone would buy a house with a door that shade of orange,” Jon says nodding at the door she appeared through. He and Helen smile at each other for a moment, something somewhat warm and somewhat guarded.

“You know, Archivist, you perplex me, though I guess understanding things isn’t in my nature anyway,” Helen says after a beat. “Here you are, finally getting free of any influence I or my kind could claim, and yet you’re still slowly killing yourself. Admittedly, it’s even slower now than before, but I would think you’d be over all that.”

Jon flinches, then bristles. “You gave me my… problems?”

“You mean your eating disorder? I thought you’d like the clinical terms,” Helen says, and then at seeing Jon’s anger grow, continued, “I didn’t give it to you. But I might have, once, when I was not me. It’s the kind of thing I do,” Helen said thoughtfully. “I remember feeling that there was some slight presence of you, always, and now it’s fading away. But now you’ll die at the Eye’s hands, when it should be the one of us you’re safe from.”

“There’s not much else for me to do, Helen. I can’t feed into the Eye, as much as you don’t understand that. Now if you just came to make fun of me…”

“No, actually,” Helen says, then sighs. Or, makes a sound like sighing. It’s more about communication than the breathing. “I would prefer if you didn’t die.”

“I would prefer that, too, generally,” Jon says dryly.

“Then why won’t you feed your patron?”

“It’s not that simple, Helen. I can’t just feed it and face no consequences. I. Hurt. People,” Jon snaps, his words clipped and his mouth curled.

“What if you could avoid that?” Helen asks.

“Well then we wouldn’t be having this conversation,” Jon sighs.

Helen smiles at that, and the door behind her swings open. “I think I have a solution for you.”

And Jon… he trusts Helen. Maybe he doesn’t trust her to have actually come up with a solution, but even though she’d threatened him and hurt him in the past, he knew that she wasn’t trying to hurt him now. If she were, she would have just done it. So, he follows her through the door.

The time in the tunnels is unremarkable, not in that it is average or disinteresting, but in that it is near impossible to say anything about it at all.

Jon steps out of the next door into a hospital room, which is unexpected and quite unwelcome. He immediately turns to step back through the door, but Helen is blocking it. 

“Why am I in a hospital?” Jon whispers furiously at her.

“Because, you can get a statement from this woman and not give her nightmares,” Helen says simply, then smiles. “This one’s good, it’s one of mine from before I was me.”

“She won’t have nightmares because she’s dying first, is that it?”

Helen nods.

“I won’t do it. I will not use a dying woman’s last moments to make her relive what may be the worst experience of her life.”

Helen looks at him like he’s crazy, which, ha. “There’s no one else around to speak to her, she’s alone right now. And besides, don’t your ‘statement givers’ usually find the experience cathartic or whatever, since you’re so concerned with what she wants. You don’t have to take it if she doesn’t want to give it, you’re smart enough to know what questions to ask.” Helen looks at her nails, not actually that bored but conveying to Jon that she’s bored of him and his quibbles. “I’m trying to help you here, even with your absurd hang ups.”

“It’s still feeding the Eye,” Jon objects, but Helen is making a lot of sense (which should not be allowed) and he’s finding it harder to argue. “That’s still contributing to the fear.”

“Archivist, you are far too dumb for what you are,” Helen says, and laughs at him, which seems unnecessary. “Humans made the fears and the fears made the humans. Without beings like us they would still exist, because humans would still be human. You can die in an ideological fight against the Eye that you’ll never win, or you can take statements to feed it and let the world continue as it always has.”

Jon doesn’t know if Helen is completely right, but-

He knows that the Slaughter is new, and that it exists because of human action. Which means she’s right about the interplay. And he knows that the Eye will always exist, with or without him.

And he also knows, somewhere in him, that the Eye will be as angry as an Entity can be when it finds out that he’s started taking Statements that it can’t get any nightmares out of, a single use Statement, and it fills him with perverse glee to spite it while still being able to sustain himself.

And he also knows he’s hungry.

Jon turns around and pulls the curtains away from the hospital bed. There is an old woman lying back in it. He can feel the draw of the Statement from her, pulling him like the scent of food never has, but he has restraint. He reaches out and knows that she will be dying soon, but her family will make it here first to say their goodbyes, which is good. He’d hate to be the last face this woman ever saw. 

As he approaches her head and kneels down, he thinks of how to ask this.

Well, he’ll be polite first. “Hello. I’m Jon, the Archivist.” Then, he thinks, and he says (he compels), “Have you ever had a disturbing experience that you would like to get off your chest?”

And, blessedly, the woman says “Yes.”

It’s second nature after that.

***

Jon emerges full, well and truly satiated in every way for the first time in his life.

**Author's Note:**

> and then helen left a door in their house that he could use to go to hospitals and take statements and he finds a good therapist and is happy with martin forever and his friends come visit all the time
> 
> anyway sorry if there were inaccuracies i may not have... finished this podcast yet. in my defense, podcast sad and fic sad but also happy
> 
> not to be a clout chaser but if you like this you can reblog it [here](https://patheticteenagewriter.tumblr.com/post/616318241640480768/i-was-born-hungry-what-do-i-need-cipherwriter) if you want


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